About Me

I'm a 62 year old married woman living in West Yorkshire. Until a few years ago I was juggling two busy jobs with running a craft business but I took early retirement from both of them in order to follow my creative dreams.
I mainly make jewellery but have recently re-engaged with my first love of fabric crafts by way of wet felting and embroidery.
I'm also a wire-work-a-holic and regularly list my wire designs in my Etsy supplies shop.
We live in a large early nineteenth century house with a garden that we never seem to quite get on top of, though we have a lot of fun trying.
We have a much loved cat, Bilbo, who has us totally twisted around his little paws.

Sunday, 25 January 2009

Felting fun!

Well, here we go - this is my very first attempt at felting! I'm so excited that I've photographed both pieces before they are dry even...

I used the simplest wet felting method I could find - laying out the fibres cross ways in three layers on bubble wrap on a bamboo mat, sprinkling with soapy water and placing more bubble wrap on top which I then rubbed and pounded with soapy hands. Having done that a while, I rolled up the mat and gave that a good rolling back and forth. Then I took the piece of felt - amazing how much it shrinks, up to 20%! - squeezed it into a ball and threw it repeatedly at the table. These processes I repeated a couple of times for each piece. Then I rinsed the felt and laid it to dry.

The smaller, less colourful piece has turned out stronger and less textural because I teased out the fibres more finely. For the larger piece I used slightly bulkier strips of fibre. I'm very pleased with both for a first attempt, though I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet. While the finer texture of the smaller piece would lend itself to being made into a bag, for example, I don't think I've made it thick enough. On balance, I think they are both going to end up being embellished with embroidery and framed.

I was worried the soap and water would wreck my hands but of course it hasn't, my hands feel incredibly soft now.

In my usual unprepared fashion I haven't yet copied the links either to the lovely seller on Folksy who I bought the beautiful Bluefaced Leicester roving from or to the website where I found the method. I will rectify this!

4 comments:

I am so glad you are having fun with your felting!!!I have read this book "Felt Making and Wool Magic: Contemporary Techniques and Beautiful Projects" by Jorie Johnson , they have it on Amazon...its a very good book, with a lot of useful info in it :)

Of course you may link to my shop, if you want to....I'd be very honoured!!!

Hiya and thanks so much for the recommendation, that book sounds just perfect! I will go and add the link now...and I'm going to be back very soon to your shop for some more roving, I've just been looking at all your lovely new colours.